Damaged cars that three Iranian scientists were riding in when they were killed in bombings over the last three years are displayed outside a conference hall hosting the meeting of Non-Aligned Movement, in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 26, 2012. Iran says the attacks against its scientists are part of a covert campaign by Israel and the West to sabotage its nuclear program, which the U.S. and its allies suspect is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

Despite Iranian and Israeli statements to the contrary, it’s a tad misleading to cast this week’s Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran a “setback” for U.S. efforts to isolate Iran. Sure, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon showed up despite the efforts of Israel and the U.S. to dissuade him from going. And yes, Egypt’s new president Mohamed Morsy is there, too, along with dozens of other leaders of the 118 member states. Don’t be surprised if the NAM summit passes boilerplate resolution supporting Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy, and condemning unilateral sanctions. But none of this is new: To view the NAM summit as a reversal in the U.S.-led campaign to isolate Iran is to vastly overestimate that campaign’s success in the first place — and also to vastly overestimate the significance of the anti-imperialist pageantry and pablum that has been the movement’s staple since its inception.

The NAM summit was scheduled three years ago, its venue reflecting the fact that Egypt will hand Iran the rotating chair of the movement founded in 1961 to express independence from the major powers waging the Cold War. The U.N. Secretary General has attended every NAM summit since the movement’s creation; for Ban to have stayed away would have been a shocking reversal of tradition. As the most senior official of the international body, he is answerable to the U.N. as a whole, and would fatally undermine his position if he was seen to be party to the geopolitical agenda of Israel and the Western powers.

Nor is Morsy’s appearance is a surprise: It was always expected that a more democratic Egypt would break the Mubarak habit of carrying water for U.S. regional agendas and instead pursue an independent foreign policy more reflective of the popular will. Even before Morsy’s election, the military junta that replaced Mubarak moved to normalize relations with Iran — not to embrace it as an ally, but simply to open diplomatic ties and distance itself from a binary approach to the region that it sees as fueling confrontation.

As for the NAM itself, it has always broadly supported Iran’s position at the IAEA, insisting on Iran’s right to all aspects of a peaceful nuclear energy program and rejecting any limits on those rights, as well as threats and unilateral sanctions. At the same time, NAM is committed to non-proliferation and the principle of the IAEA as the competent body to police it, and insists that Iran comply with IAEA demands over its nuclear activities.

In short, neither NAM nor the U.N. Secretary General were party to any effort to isolate Iran in the first place, but nor are they about to give Tehran a free pass over non-compliance with the IAEA. Other than restate its longstanding positions and provide a pleasing photo opportunity, there’s not much the NAM can actually do for Iran in the nuclear standoff — and the vexed issue of Syria, as well as domestic political repression in Iran could yet provide some uncomfortable moments for the regime in Tehran.

But Iran’s efforts to paint the NAM summit as a major propaganda coup were actually amplified by Israel’s response. “Mr. Secretary General, your place is not in Tehran,” declared Netanyahu, in a tone reportedly deemed so condescending by Ban aides that it reinforced his determination to attend. And the Israeli media portrayed the event as if a portent of crisis. One senior Israeli commentator even offered the feverish suggestion that the NAM summit represented “a clear and present danger” that would “shorten the path to war” — ostensibly by affirming Israeli complaints that Iran is not as isolated as the Obama Administration likes to say it is, reinforcing the hawkish narrative that sanctions have failed. Painting a NAM summit as a threat to anything other than road traffic in the host city is an argument hard to sustain outside of the Israeli simulacrum in which a war with Iran is both inevitable and imminent.

The Obama Administration may be among those skeptical of the Israeli media clamor predicting a unilateral military strike on Iran before Americans go to the polls in November. Former Clinton Administration ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk last Thursday told IDF radio that the Administration is unlikely to be moved by the latest round of Israeli saber rattling, having become convinced last March that Netanyahu was about to order an attack, only to determine that he had been bluffing in order to push Washington to adopt a tougher stance. Administration officials “were convinced that Israel was going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in the spring, and we’ve tried everything in our power to change their stance,” Indyk told his interviewer. “I think afterwards they felt that Prime Minister Netanyahu created a big fraud.”

Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME, where he has covered international conflicts in the Middle East, Asia, and the Balkans since 1997. A native of South Africa, he now resides with his family in Brooklyn, New York.